Page 38 of Devil’s Azalea (Nightshades #3)

RAFAEL

“Sergey Volkov is back home.”

My head snaps up at Enzo’s announcement as he walks into my office. “What?” He and Jason were arrested last night and they’re releasing him already? Emilia almost lost her life for this? My fingers curl into a fist on my desk.

“Either the Russian’s lawyers are miracle workers, the FBI couldn't find anything on Sergey, or something fishy is going on.” Enzo sinks into the chair across from me. “What do you think?”

“I know for a fact his lawyers aren’t that good. And the FBI always has a dossier on everyone. So I’m leaning towards the latter.” I close the reports tab I’ve been reviewing to give him my full attention. “What about Jason?”

“Well, he’s the one they were specifically after, so he’s still in their custody. For now.”

Of course. But I have no doubt he’ll be released soon too. If experience has taught me anything about these government agencies, it's how much they love striking deals. And Jason comes off as exactly the kind of spineless politician who’d sell his own mother to save his skin .

I’ll need to handle him carefully moving forward. Because the one thing that seems to be making the agency hard as fuck right now is me and my brothers. Could Sergey have cut a deal as well?

“Put a tail on Sergey. I want to know everything, and I mean everything —when he eats, where he sleeps, who he talks to. If he so much as sneezes the wrong way, I want to know the exact trajectory of his snot. And keep eyes on Jason too. I want to know the second he walks out those doors.”

Something is off. Way off. And I will get to the bottom of it.

Enzo nods, pushes off the chair, and walks out of my office.

I turn to my laptop, fingers already moving across the keys as I navigate to the encrypted site where I chat with SP. It’s been a few days since I asked him to dig into the new FBI director—I hope he has something for me by now.

“By the way,” Enzo says, dragging my door open again and poking his head back in. “I think I might be getting onto something in my investigation into Tomassi’s death.”

“Well?” I wave an impatient hand when he doesn’t follow up right away. If he has finally cracked something about the death of Emilia’s father—and why I was framed for it—he better spit it out.

“Remember the car from the abandoned building? The one that wasn’t really abandoned?” He steps back into my office, closing the door behind him.

I remember exactly what car he’s talking about.

“You mean the sedan that was used to snatch that last child a decade ago? What about it?” I ask skeptically.

The sedan was deliberately kept dilapidated so it wouldn't raise suspicions when parked on random streets.

Perfect camouflage for predators hunting children.

After the events of that night—my brothers and I almost losing our lives, watching Tomassi die, finding out about Emilia’ s betrayal—I sent Enzo and a couple of my men back to the building to wipe any trace of us ever being there.

“Well, I had jotted down the plate number during the cleanup, but somewhere along the way, it got buried in my files and I forgot about it. You know how it is when shit hits the fan—details get lost in the chaos.”

Get to the fucking point , I want to scream, but I force myself to stay quiet.

“When I was going through my old archives, I came across it again and decided to run it through our systems. Turns out it’s registered to a different car now. Guess who’s using it now?” He pauses for dramatic effect, the bastard.

I raise an eyebrow.

“ Sergey .”

“What?” If he was involved in that mess a decade ago, then it’s insanely stupid of him to be using that plate number again.

“I knew something about the plates on one of those vehicles at the restaurant seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it at the time, so I let it go,” Enzo goes on.

“But looking into that old plate number unraveled that mystery for me. Although Sergey is using it now, it was originally registered under his brother, Vladimir’s name. ”

I shift my weight until my back sinks into the backrest of my chair.

So… Tomassi was working with the Russians back then?

Of course, I knew the former detective couldn’t possibly have committed those heinous crimes alone, but I never really cared to look into it again—especially not when the kidnappings stopped after his death.

But now I’m wondering: did they really stop? Or did those sick fucks just move the operation to another territory?

“If that plate number really belonged to Vladimir,” I say slowly, “then they might have moved operations out of New York after their partner died—got spooked or something. Or maybe they changed gears completely, turned the trafficking ring into a full-on crime syndicate.” Back then, the Bratva didn't have much of a foothold in New York. Not like they do now.

“The plot thickens,” Enzo murmurs with a dark chuckle. “The events of ten years ago might be a hell of a lot bigger than we initially thought. I’ll keep digging and let you know what else turns up.”

With that, he backs out of my office with a little salute.

The feds covered up Tomassi’s involvement in the trafficking case ten years ago, letting him keep his shiny image as the heroic detective who died fighting a just cause. Could that somehow have something to do with Sergey getting released now? Could he have a contact in the bureau?

I glance down at my laptop and see three new messages already came in from SP while I was talking to Enzo. I lean forward, scanning the new files: one document and two image attachments. This has to be the intel on Stacey Rodrigues. Finally.

My pulse kicks up as I open the document and start reading the two pages of information he’s curated.

Stacey Rodrigues. Mid-60s. Dark hair, dark eyes. Never married, no kids.

A top agent in the FBI for twenty years. She slowly worked her way up the ranks—first becoming Assistant Director of the New York field office, then Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch, and now Director of the entire bureau.

Decorated with multiple medals, including a shared Medal of Valor with the late police detective Tomassi Rossi (awarded on an honorary basis since he wasn’t an FBI agent) for —

My eyes widen, lips parting as I pause. She got a medal with Tomassi? That would mean she was the agent who worked with him to take down my father. I continue reading.

— bravely going up against the criminal ring in Little Italy

and their leader, Alfonsi Moretti.

She took a two-month leave after Tomassi’s death, then came back hotter,

breaking open even more cases and rising through the ranks faster than before.

Below that is a list of cases she successfully solved, with scanned images of old newspaper clippings praising her for her bravery.

She oversaw the arrest of several big names in the underworld—and I remember some of those cases feeling off, like they were solved a little too cleanly. Like someone on the inside was helping.

Stacey Rodrigues. A very suspicious and dangerous woman.

I close the document and open the first image. It’s a photo of Tomassi with a Hispanic woman who looks to be in her thirties. They’re both in civilian outfits, posing for the camera with awkward smiles.

She’s pretty , I think dispassionately.

But then I look closer, really study her face, and my blood turns to ice.

Fucking hell.

It’s her... it’s the woman who shot Tomassi. No fucking way.

I glance down, and there it is: a little note beneath the picture.

Tomassi Rossi with Stacey Rodrigues.

Fuck. She killed her own partner? Why? What went so catastrophically wrong between them?

From the little I could piece together back then, this woman was the one who sicced Emilia on me, told her to investigate me and my brothers. And that investigation led the FBI straight to Tomassi—through us.

At least, that’s what it seems like on paper.

But if that’s the case, then she should have been shocked to see her supposedly dead partner alive and well five years after the fact. There was no way she could have known Tomassi was involved in trafficking, and she damn sure wouldn’t have shot at him if she was genuinely surprised to see him.

Fuck. Everything I thought I had figured out is suddenly warped and twisted. What the fuck really happened ten years ago?

I hate this—not knowing.

I open the second image, and the sight of it makes my chest tighten with rage.

It’s the same Hispanic woman, a little older now but not by much, standing next to Emilia, who’s wearing a graduation gown. Both have stiff, formal expressions, but Emilia is gazing up at the older woman with unmistakable affection and admiration glowing in her eyes.

Fuck .

Of course she got her claws into Emilia. She’s probably the one who fed my girl lies about who killed her father, poisoned her against me, all to break us apart and save her own skin. “Fucking witch.”

How deep does this conspiracy go? How are the events of a decade ago linked to the fucking Russians and this woman? Because I know they have to be linked somehow. These threads don’t weave together by coincidence.

A new message pops up from SP:

I have a few more leads to follow, but I thought you needed to see this first.

I’ll update you once I dig up more .

Good .

As per our arrangement, I wire him half of the payment for his services. He’ll get the rest when he delivers the full story. After sending the receipt confirmation, I immediately delete every trace of the transaction from my device.

SP

Received. And I think you should know. Your little toy is now on the Russians’ radar after the restaurant incident.

My little toy? What the fuck is he talking about?

A video file appears in the chat, and I’m frowning as I click play. The footage is grainy, shot from a distance, showing a woman walking through Lower Manhattan.

Then she glances back over her shoulder, and my chest tightens. Emilia .